Hello and welcome to the podcast of the Life Scientific.

First broadcast on BBC Radio 4.

I'm Jumal Kiele and my mission is to interview the most fascinating and important

scientists alive today and to find out what makes them tick.

Fungi are rotters.

They destroy crops, make our skin flaky and turn brickwork to dust. But without them there'd be no life on earth.

It's fungi's ability to destroy things, wood and dead plant matter, as well as fruit, feet and buildings that

enables new life to grow. My guess this morning is a fungal

ecologist at Cardiff University. Professor Lynn Bodie started her life scientific lugging logs

back to the lab to find out what makes them rot.

These days, among other things, she studies the vicious strategies different fungi use

to defend their territory.

Fungal fighting, direct strangulation and chemical weapons are not unknown.

Professor Limbody, welcome to the life scientific.

Thank you very much.

Now, when I say fungi, I think a lot of people will imagine that you study molds and mushrooms.

But these are of course only the tip of the fungal iceberg aren't they?

Absolutely. The things that we usually think of as fungi like toadstools and the brackets that you see on trees

are like the flowers or fruits of flowering plants. We know with plants that you don't just

have the flowers, you have the leaves and the roots and the shoots,

while fungi have the mycelium, which is a network of fine filaments,

and they are growing in or on whatever the fungus is feeding.

...